


a dream of flourishing

by azure7539



Series: Azure's 007 Fest 2019 [13]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 007 Fest, 007 Fest 2019, Angst, Delusions, Gen or Pre-Slash, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azure7539/pseuds/azure7539
Summary: SPECTRE aftermath—or one way it could’ve gone.





	a dream of flourishing

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this is based on [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_T3KuW3sfY). Not that this fic is in the spirit of the song, but well, it still has that sort of feel, I guess.

By the time Bond realizes he is _probably_ hyperventilating and _slightly_ dissociating, it’s a little too late. His heart is pounding near the point of bursting inside the confinement of his chest, and the pressure building up rapidly in the back of his throat is forcing air out of his lungs far too quickly. Quicker than he can force some of it back inside his body, at any rate.

Usually, it’s easier to just start listing the objects in his surrounding to ground himself, but considering that he’s currently inside a lift, there’s hardly going to be much of anything for him to recount.

_Breathe. Breathe. Breathe._

Said lift shudders to a stop eventually, its doors sliding open after a distant chime, and there’s someone on the other side of the threshold.

“Bond?”

Leaning against the railing, Bond merely looks like he’s just either really exhausted or spectacularly drunk, and his breath hitches somewhat when he looks up and meets Q’s inquisitive eyes.

There’s a dull ache throbbing in his temple, remnants of Blofeld’s drilling that he hasn’t actually checked out (too busy and too disinclined to do anything as such), and Bond has to squint a little before staggering forward some.

“Q?”

“Yes?” Q’s head cocks to the side for a tiny bit, mannerism perhaps mirroring that of the two cats he did mention somewhere previously. “Are you quite all right?”

Bond blinks, his ears ringing a long, almost painful sound. “I—” The buzzing in the back of his head is fast developing into a shrewd noise, but Bond would rather not listen to it.

Not now. Maybe not ever.

“I’m all right.” He forces himself to calm down, to refocus his vision and try to soothe the quiet tremble in his limbs. “What… are you doing here?”

Bond pushes himself out of the lift with an inward sigh of relief, and Q moves out of his way.

“Ah,” he hums, pushing those glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I was just on my way, to be honest.” He looks up at Bond, eyes so bright that Bond’s stomach tightens, a certain voice telling him to look away. “If you’re expecting me to say that I ran after you because you didn’t seem too well, then you’re starting to flatter yourself too much, 007.”

There’s a hint of a tease in his voice, and when Bond finally looks up, he catches the tail end of a quirk of the lips.

He swallows and finds himself smiling back a little, too. “Oh?” His eyes are wandering, trying to see if he can still correctly remember the number of tiles in this hallway, lengthwise. “You’re implying that I flatter myself all the time?”

“Don’t you?” Q raises an eyebrow, and Bond huffs out a soft breath.

“Only about as much as you do.”

_(First.)_

-

Bond blows up another embassy, the voice on the other end of the comms is wrong, and he gets home with a limp and is feeling only a slight bit miffed by it all.

“Don’t forget to write in your report this time,” Eve says, her voice frosty despite the barely cordial smile, clipped as the sound of her stilettos clicking on the floor as she walks away.

Bond peers down at the manila folder containing all the unfilled paperwork in his hand, feeling oddly guilty just as a shadow of a figure stops next to him by the stairwell.

(Bond hasn’t used a lift, unless completely necessary, for quite some time.)

“What did you do that pissed off Miss Moneypenny?”

“Q,” Bond greets, incrementally relaxing. “Why are you assuming that I did anything at all?”

“You’re always doing something, Bond,” Q replies in a matter-of-fact tone. “Even when you don’t realize it.”

Bond glances up at that last whispered addition, but before he actually tries to ask, his mind suddenly recalls something else: “Why weren’t you directing my mission?”

Q turns to shoot Bond a pointed, unimpressed look. “You’re not the only agent under my care, Bond.”

The explanation seems fair and just enough yet wholly unsatisfactory at the same time, and Bond can’t figure out why he’s beginning to get a little light-headed.

“Shouldn’t you be in Q-Branch?” he asks next, the perfect non sequitur, his fingers worrying the corner of the folder in his hands.

“I’m having a meeting, Bond,” Q replies with the patience of someone attempting to talk to a particularly slow child. “Something which I should be heading to now. Much like how _you_ should be filling those out.”

_(Second.)_

-

“Out of Q-Branch again?”

Q pauses in his tracks to regard Bond sideways. “Just running some tests,” he says vaguely. “Have you dragged yourself to Medical, yet? Or shouldn’t I even ask?”

Bond falls into step with Q easily, clammy hands flexing in the pockets of his trousers. “Soon enough,” he also vaguely answers. No psych-evaluation is ever something that requires discussion outside of it. “Say, are your minions… angry at me or something?”

“What?” Q blinks. “Did you do something again?”

“You and your assumption of my guilt.” Bond feigns an offended expression, which lasts for a total of one entire second. “But no. I even returned all the equipment,” he emphasizes. “As you well know.”

At this, Q thinks for a moment, then shrugs. “Try groveling.” He smirks. “That always seems to work.”

“Ha ha,” Bond deadpans. “Very funny.”

“Still worth a shot.” Q grins.

_(Third.)_

* * *

_Bond meets Q many more times afterwards._

_He always seems to be forgetting something, something extremely important, every single time._

* * *

“No sign of improvement?”

“No, sir. He refuses treatment and immediately shuts down the second there’s any mention of anything that’s related to his delusion, but as you can see—” the doctor sighs, pointing at the drawn-up surveillance footage on the screen of Mallory’s computer. “His condition is likely growing worse. The frequency of it is rising as well.”

Mallory inhales and holds the pocket of air there for a moment as he contemplates what he’s seeing before his eyes.

“What else can be done?”

“Well… there’s still the remaining option of confronting the patient with his delusion, but there’s a very high probability that he’ll react badly when this happens.”

Mallory grits his teeth and clenches his fingers, watching as his monitor shows Bond chatting to nothing but thin air.

* * *

_The third time Bond met Q had happened when he had just gotten out of his second, unprompted psych-eval with one of those MI6 shrinks. Familiar situation; familiar setting. What he hadn’t understood was why they had needed this at all in the first place._

_The man had asked Bond about whether or not he had been seeing Q, and he truly hadn’t known what this doctor had expected him to say._

-

_The second time Bond met Q had happened when Bond had been going down to Q-Branch to turn in his kit. Eve had met him halfway and had all but shoved that folder into his hand._

_He had been too absorbed with the headache piercing in his skull to notice her red-rimmed eyes and the way how Q had just been there without even having gotten out of a lift._

-

_The first time Bond met Q had happened when Tanner had just shown him a forensic file with photos in which Q’s head had been shot clean through with a bullet._

**Author's Note:**

> _[ **Angst Prompt Table Fill:** Delusion]_


End file.
